Breaking crust - where is it possible now?

A snowHead

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I used to take my time to get down through France. My Renault 4s and then early Golfs were perfect on the Route Nationale rather than the autoroute - in the Summer I would relish the flashing light through the lines of plane trees, and the limestone barns gaudy with faded painted mural signs of Ricard and Michelin and Citroen. At noon I would always pull off into a village and find the inevitable small restaurant, full of agricultural workers talking low and nursing a Pernod as well as rehydrating and refuelling after long hours in burning sun. And the bread. I would never cease to love breakfast outside a village bakery - a perfect, butter scented flaking croissant dipped in bitter black coffee, and then broken bread with unsalted butter and jam. Two or more baguettes always bought, wrapped and protected from the heat since they would be late afternoon top-up with cheese in a meadow or wood off the main road.

All this seems to have gone.

About five years we broke our Easter autoroute dash back from the Alps and drove through village after village to find the restaurants and bakeries and cheese shops. We found them. All converted to homes or sitting vacant. The bread we bought from the small shops we eventually found was pre-baked - sad affairs. Decent but not spectacular cheese. In February we stopped at a ‘artisanal bakery’ in Pontarlier only to be profoundly disappointed by the quality of the bread - not artisanal at all.

But in our village in Switzerland there has been an amazing bakery thriving on making the most authentic bread - Paillasse and Pain de Siegle - since the 1940s. It is incredibly financially robust, and it has no intention of contracting, expanding, or changing what it does. We just marvel over the bread at breakfast and lunch - we genuinely miss it when we return to England. This morning in Dublin I had bread of the same quality, and a croissant of such quality and authenticity in flavour and texture that my mind was taken straight back to those summer days over forty years. Bread 41 Pearse St. Great find. But more, we found a fantastic bakery in Metabief on the way over to the Alps this Easter - bread with a crust of complexity and flavour, baked just hours before we arrived….wonderful. And Conte cheese of incredible quality from the small supermarche at the Jougne roundabout. Things are looking up.

Any other Snowheads with pins on the map for proper bread and croissants?

All of this is no trivial matter - bread was once a highly nutritious stable - but rendered into a grim form by industrial production and financial goals - and apart from the health aspects of decent bread, surveys show that people most value the small pleasures of coffee at breakfast, a tea in the morning, a fine tasing meal….

A snowHead

@valais2, I'm not a fan of croissants but the rot of not being able to find decent bread had well and truly set in by the time I was regularly driving through France in the early 80s. And my childhood memory of eating the sweet, black bread (spread with unsalted butter and morello cherry jam) in a café above Vermala has never been surpassed. wink

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@valais2, PS you sound like the French equivalent of a Hovis advertisement! Laughing

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Yes, the first post would have been enhanced by a gentle rendition of Dvorak’s Symphony No 9 playing in the background!

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As retirement looms I have often thought about the fact time doesn’t matter anymore.
I quite fancy small adventures and I’m contemplating just setting the sat nav to avoid motorways and tolls.
Probably take me two days to get from Calais but I bet it would be a nice two days, especially when I don’t care about pace of progress

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In Chamonix we have a very friendly bakery in les Pelerins who do many fine breads.

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@KSH, ah yes … but I think the upshot is that quality is now coming back … thank goodness

After all it is free

@valais2, in Val Thorens there is a proper Boulangerie on Rue du soleil, Sucre Sale, freshly baked baguettes, croissant and pain au chocolate etc, and lots of sweet treats.

was there in march, and you needed to get there early in the morning, as by around 8am the queue would stretch out along the road.

just returned from Les Menuires yesterday, and unfortunately the only "proper" boulangerie in the croisette area, had already closed for the season Crying or Very sad

generally, it seemed that the supermarkets in resort would serve the pre-baked items you can buy in any supermarket at home and heat up in an oven.

i have lovely memories of when my eldest was just a few months old, of going to a holiday camp in brittany, she would wake up early in the morning, so i would get up with her to give the missus a break.
i would then put her in her pram, and take her for a walk to the nearest village (about a mile away), there was a traditional boulangerie there, where you could also sit outside with a coffee and a pastry. she would be asleep by then, so i would sit there for an hour or so, i was still trying (and failing) to learn french then, so would buy a regional french newspaper to read and just chill out until she woke up again.
then walk back to the holiday camp with the pastries and bread for the day.

like @Jonny996, i am looking to do a couple of different meandering trips to parts of France that i have not visited before, via the RN network and stopping off in different villages and towns to sample the local fayre, first place on the list is the Alsace region.

when i was first dating (my now ex wife), we did a similar camping trip in western france, we went down as far as La Rochelle, via the Loire valley, we went for around 3 weeks. only using the RN network, no sat nav then, just old fashioned Michelin road maps, and a lonely planet guide.
staying for couple of nights in different places
sadly, we also had an E-leclerc map, so we would tick of the the different supermarkets we would visit close to the campsites we were staying, and just amazed by the range of fresh produce on offer (compared to the uk).
the closer you got to the coast, the bigger the fresh fish counter seemed to get Very Happy

This isn't continental, but possibly nearer to home for you @valais2, the Hambleton Bakery https://www.hambletonbakery.co.uk/ started a few years ago with traditional method and baking, originally in wood fired oven. They appear to have spread more since last I visited, may offer something of that flavour.

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bit of a confusing title, I originally thought you were talking of breakable crust snow ...

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@under a new name, pun intended

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@ski3, we have a few artisan bakeries in Edinburgh but the problem is, they are instagram famous and the queues are quite amazing

@Jonny996, ah the queue in Dublin was long this morning - bout 20mins - which thankfully shows the demand is real

You know it makes sense.

Locally in the UK, we have Claypath Deli, a café and sourdough bakery, and they do some very fine pastries and pizza too.
In France, Boulangerie Flayol in Le Monetier-les-Bains has a great selection of different breads. Bread is baked down the road in the zone artisanal though, and brought up regularly to the shop, still hot and fresh.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

We lost our on site bakery in StG when the baker died (I’ve never seen such a busy funeral) , this chap https://lachoco.fr/ bought it over and two others .
TBF the bread is still as good as ever.
The other option is this one. https://boutique.petitsgourmands.fr/

I think StG is going through a high end patisserie war.

A snowHead

@Hells Bells, thanks good pin for the Map of Bread

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@abc, ….i hope not - artisanal baker StClement in Cambridge def has a queue of locals, Taillens in Montana chock full of people from the village and likewise the baker we found in Metabief…

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We usually spend a couple of days cruising through French back roads the the motorhome on our way to and from the Alps. Stumble across all sorts of places and have discovered Pain au Raisins the size of dinner plates. Razz

One dark evening in a deserted village somewhere near Saint Dizier I even came across a mobile fish n chip van!

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After all it is free

@Origen, agreed … but on the road needs must …

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I am planning our summer trip right now, and also planning to stay away from the autoroutes for some of the journey. I'll post back on boulangeries on the way. We had some lovely pastries and bread when we had our campervan.

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@Hells Bells, …excellent…many thanks

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There is one we buy that can be used all day, and can even be toasted the following morning. A real revelation I know. @valais2, looking forward to the Bread Map.

You know it makes sense.

@abc, I reckon croissants last a bit longer because they are so high in fat. "French bread" in UK supermarkets contains a whole list of stuff not allowed in France where only flour, water, salt and yeast (or levain) are allowed in baguettes ("pain de mie" can have all sort of emulsifiers and dough improvers added and is IMHO usually fairly horrid).

I've often toasted ordinary baguettes the next day but for eating frensh, French people ideally buy baguettes several times a day.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Its called progress, the first time I went to france was in 1979 on a young farmers exchange trip to the loire valley, in the farm I stayed on the grandmother and mother started cooking at 7.30 in the morning, breakfast was a simple meal.of crossiants dipped in a bowl 9f coffee, lunch was a five coarse affair made of small amounts of food, all eaten from one plate accompanied with wine, the evening meal was made up of more courses and more wine.
Now just as in the uk wives work full time and food is much simpler as time is short, French supermarkets are full of ready made meals and sandwiches etc, times change and usually not for the better

A snowHead

This thread has taken me back to the 80s and early 90s camping in France on our own and then when the boys were young. Some camp sites, a bread van would turn up for breakfast needs - great days in the sun, memories of the cheap red we'd finished off the night before after the boys were asleep. But it seemed to taste OK on a French campsite in the warmth of the evening....

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@abc,

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I disagree on the baguettes. Back at the time to which you refer they tended to be white and fluffy. The sourdough revolution has hit boulangeries too and a ‘Tradition’ baguette is better than the ordinary 1980s one.

Cheese in the 80s came from the supermarket and the brands there are unchanged; occasionally you’d find an artisan at the marché who was selling unbranded cheese - usually farmhouse crotins - but I don’t remember much of it and I’m pretty sure you still can. British cheese over this period has evolved to the point that it is significantly better than the French. So shop for it in Borough Market.

I found the most divine bakery/patisserie somewhere in the Chamonix valley at 7am as I drove past on Saturday. My Applepay tells me it was called Au Mont Chou. It had even modernised (i.e. taken on the British way) and was selling takeaway drinks.

Limestone derelict barns still abound. The problem is that everything was cheap back then and now it’s more expensive than the UK. The price of butter in France!!

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This thread is somewhat timely as many of our boulangeries, as the season officially ended yesterday in the valley here, either are now closed or are only open 5 days or so a week and have nowhere near the lovelies available as in high season.

It does get a little confusing if you can't remember what's open and when!

That said, many French towns, and I base this on three or four I know well Laughing

Now have modern establishments that are both cafes and restaurants and are often in the commercial centres, and have a wide selection of breads and pastries.

In Briancon for instance, it's next door to McDonalds Laughing

As for baguettes, as most know they can come in varying sizes & types, such as the Tradition and Flute etc

I tend to buy pain de campagne, which I think is made of different flours, has a thicker crust, and so keeps longer. Likewise, pain complet and pain aux céréales both keep longer than a day.

My favourite in our boulangerie, is pain sportif which is full of nuts and cranberries and a softer/darker dough.

@Hells Bells, will be driving up through Monetier shortly, so will see which, if any, is now open!

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Coincidentally (well that's how coincidence works..) I came across this on CNN yesterday which is about the same thing: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/france-baguette-uncertain-future

In UK we have lots of great bakeries, in the rich places at least. There's both Korean and Italian bakeries within a couple of hundred meters of here, both with queues out the door if you want to go at the wrong time. I'd have to walk 20 minutes to get French bread / croissants. Turkish bread is about 10 minutes away.

We also have a couple of artisan coffee roasters nearby. I no longer roast my own beans, it's not necessary any more. That's a massive change.

For English bread I suppose you have to go to a supermarket. I'm not sure how that happened exactly, but perhaps Chorleywood has something to do with it. On the other hand, I don't think my parents would have wanted to pay sourdough prices when Warburton's sliced was available.

After all it is free

In my fatter days, I did like to go to the local Polish bakery. Now that was a heavy bread,

@Weathercam, there used to be a system where they alternated, one week on and one week off, and sometimes only in the mornings. But we haven't been in interseason for a while now.

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Breaking crust - where is it possible now?

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